


the middle of starting over

by perfectlystill



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: F/M, Gen, background Riley/Lucas, unsure what this is: a character study? outsider pov? who knows!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-17
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-01 23:10:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2791127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectlystill/pseuds/perfectlystill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maya sees Lucas first. Riley forgets this. Or, rather, she doesn't think about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the middle of starting over

**Author's Note:**

> Titles are impossible. Clearly this is from Sabrina Carpenters's _The Middle of Starting Over_ because why not?

Maya sees Lucas first. Riley forgets this. Or, rather, she doesn't think about it.

If she thought about it, and if Maya was anyone else, Riley knows she'd think of her in awful ways -- as competition or a threat. Riley knows she's insecure, wrote it on her forehead in seventh grade and felt the word's imprint on her skin long after it'd been smudged off. She knows she's a good person, a good friend, and she always tries her best, tries to do the right thing. But she gets jealous of people -- not just girls, but everyone -- and fears they're going to take away everything she holds dear. Irrational and horrible and awful. It's her least favorite thing about herself.

Maya is her best friend in the whole entire world. They gave each other the chicken pox when they were six, and her parents helped pay for Maya's swim lessons. Maya helped her be brave enough to go into the deep end of the pool. When Maya got her ears pierced, Riley pulled on the sleeve of her father's sweater, eyes wide and sad, and begged to get her ears pierced, too. It worked. Eventually.

So when she thinks about meeting Lucas on the subway, Riley thinks about Maya pushing her toward him, her encouragement and support. She thinks about stumbling and falling into Lucas's lap. She doesn't let herself think that -- as wrong and awful as it is -- Maya gave him to her.

Because Maya is her best friend in the whole entire world, and she doesn't know how to separate Maya from herself and think of Maya in a way that is less than complimentary.

It's her favorite thing about herself.

 

 

It starts plainly enough.

They're watching Disney movies at her house. They -- Lucas, Maya, Farkle, and Riley, because Riley has been very careful to make sure that the friendships stay intact despite the fact that she and Lucas are dating now. It sends a thrill up her spine, _dating,_ makes her smile too wide, all teeth and no lips. She gets to rehash her dates with Lucas, _dates! real, actual, dinner-and-a-movie, miniature golfing, walking-through-central-park, dates!_ , in minute detail with Maya until Maya shakes her head, smiles small and fond, telling her to get on with it already: "how was the kissage," complete with gross smacking noises that make Riley giggle. But they all still sit together at lunch, and she and Maya still have sleepovers, and no one feels left out.

Nothing much has changed except for a small shift in the fluttering of Riley's stomach when Lucas sits next to her or touches her hand.

She's happy. Ridiculously happy. The fairy tale has commenced.

Until Maya falls asleep, smooshed between Riley and Farkle on the couch, Lucas on the other side of Riley. Her breathing is loud, but she's not snoring, and her head lolls onto Riley's shoulder. Almost half an hour ago, Maya had swung her legs over Riley's lap, and her feet are in Lucas's. He had complained initially, tried to push them off, but he hadn't tried that hard, because Maya threw them there again with an exasperated huff and throwaway comment about hospitality.

 _Mulan_ is about to save the emperor when something catches Riley's eye in her peripheral vision: Lucas absently massaging Maya's feet, eyes still on the movie. It makes something hiccup in her chest, but she simply blinks and looks away. She's not about to be overly dramatic, especially when Maya's started wearing those heeled ankle boots and has been whining to Riley between class about how the arches of her feet hurt.

 

 

"This is terrible," Maya says.

"It'll be fun!" Riley counters, their words just barely overlapping. 

They're on a class trip to upstate New York, two days overnight. There will be team building activities, a talent show, and everyone will have to help work in the kitchen cabin for a meal. Riley's excited about hiking and the sharing bunkbeds with Maya -- Maya's letting her have the bottom bunk and Riley is very grateful -- and less excited about bugs. Because ew. But she's never been to summer camp, and this feels like a short version, albeit with her father as a chaperon, but still. She'll take what she can get.

"Terrible," Maya repeats, glaring at the trees.

"I think it'll be nice," Lucas offers, shrugging. "We'll be able to see the stars."

Maya tilts her head. "Oh dear me, the stars! And around the campfire you can enlighten us city girls with stories about home on the range. Bolo ties, cowboy boots, the smell of horse manure. So romantic."

"Only if you want, ma'am."

Maya groans. "Why do I keep trying?"

Lucas grins, and Riley slips her hand into his. "You know, we could do a duet tomorrow night. I brought the harmonica."

"You are insufferable." Maya glares, but it's not the scary kind, and it's not the way she'd glared at the trees seconds ago. 

"But really, you should do something for the talent show," Lucas says

"Like hold a picture up as though I'm reading a book to first graders?" She bites the inside of her cheek the same way she did before meeting her dad for dinner. It hadn't gone well, and Maya wasn't crying when she showed up at Riley's just over an hour later. She had cried that night though, lights off in Riley's room, Riley's arms around her, promising that anyone who didn't want to know her was missing out. 

"No." Lucas rolls his eyes. "Sing. Tell jokes. Something. You're really creative, Maya."

"Yeah. You could do anything," Riley agrees, smiling. "I could help! We could do something together!"

She likes the way Lucas encourages Maya, earnest and just the right side of pushy. Riley knows sometimes Maya needs that. She likes that Maya and Lucas get along -- well, she understand that it's fun for them, the back-and-forth, Maya hoping one of these days Lucas is going to snap and tell her to stop; Lucas refusing to let annoyance get the best of him. She knows that if they didn't, if they weren't friends, she'd pester both of them to hang out. 

But there's something about the look Lucas shoots her, as though he doesn't think Riley should've volunteered to do something with Maya, that makes her frown. Maya's already got that spark in her eye, though, the one that means she has an idea, probably a terrifying, half-baked one, but they have some time to work on it. 

When Riley and Lucas are standing in a group later, the class trying to use the wood panels to get everyone across the field without touching the ground, Riley thinks about asking Lucas why he looked so unsure, disappointed even. She doesn't. She's a little scared of what he would say. She doesn't take criticism well. 

 

 

When Maya doesn't show up at her house before school, sending a text about being sick in her place, Riley wants to investigate. 

Except she'll be late if she does, and she has a math test she won't be able to make up. Riley misses her though, especially when Farkle makes her do all the work dissecting the pig in biology. Maya would've stepped up, made a few jokes, and instead Riley suffers through Farkle's gagging noises. She leaves class convinced her hair smells like formaldehyde. 

When she tells Lucas she's going to check up on Maya after school, he immediately agrees to accompany her. 

"Don't you have basketball practice?" she asks, hand stilling on her history textbook.

He frowns before shaking his head, almost imperceptible, but Riley has gotten good at watching him, carefully and closely and probably creepily. "It's fine. I just need to make sure she'll live another day to conflate Texas with the entire Southern part of the country." 

Riley likes walking with him, likes linking her arm through his and leaning against him. He's warm and smells good and lets her set the pace even though his legs are longer. Patches of slush litter the ground, grey and wet and the last remainders of winter. The wind is still cold and sharp, makes Riley's skin feel dry and tight, and the sky is the kind of grey and pale that makes it seem like the world's saturation has been sucked out of it. 

She buzzes up to Maya's apartment but doesn't get an answer. "What do we do now?" Lucas asks.

"Go up." Riley wraps her fingers around his wrist and tugs him after her. 

Maya doesn't answer the door after Riley knocks, but when she twists the handle it opens. "She's either going to be extra grouchy, or nice and pitiful," Riley warns. "She got the flu in sixth grade and spent the entire week pouting." Riley sticks out her bottom lip to demonstrate. 

Lucas's mouth quirks up. "I think I'm prepared."

Riley knocks on Maya's bedroom door, too, opens it when she hears a faint groan. Maya's lying on her bed, pale and a little sweaty, blankets tangled in her legs. She groans again, lifting her head to look at them before letting it flop back down. "Riley, I might be contagious." 

"It's okay." Riley looks down at her but doesn't touch. "So, you're really sick, huh?"

Maya finds it in her to roll her eyes, but it looks like it takes a lot of effort. "I faked one time." Riley raises an eyebrow. "Four times."

"Four times?" Lucas repeats. 

"Who invited you, Ranger Rick?" Maya asks, but there's none of her usual spunk behind it; it's flat and quiet. 

"Good to see you, too."

"Do you want soup?" Riley bounces on her toes, flexes her fingers. There's a half-empty sleeve of crackers lying on the floor next to a plastic cup with a ring of orange juice on the bottom. "We'll make you soup."

"I don't have any." Maya closes her eyes and exhales. 

"Well, We'll get you some." She has a twenty for emergencies tucked into her wallet, and Maya's health is a topmost priority, if you ask Riley. She thinks her parents would agree, anyway. Bending down, she picks up the crackers and the juice. Riley awkwardly pats Maya's leg. "Be back soon." 

Riley pauses at the door when she realizes Lucas isn't behind her. He rests his hand against Maya's forehead, face soft. "Feels like you have a fever," he says. 

"The great country detective." Maya's eyes are still closed.

"We'll get you some medicine."

"You don't have to."

Lucas smiles down at her, endeared and fond in a way Riley has never seen before, brushing some hair off her forehead. 

Riley swallows, feels a little bit like she can't breathe. 

 

 

Realizing your boyfriend is in love with your best friend is, well, it certainly is something.

It's funny, Riley thinks. Reminds her of that Alanis Morrissette song about rain on your wedding day that her mother liked, years ago, for a few months. Riley had listened to it over and over again, trying to understand. She would laugh now, maybe, if her throat wasn't so dry, on the verge of closing up. Because honestly, it's funny, like the last act of a romantic comedy. Except Riley always thought she was the lead, and maybe she's just the quirky best friend and she's the only one who didn't see the switcheroo coming.

She walks back into her living room where Lucas tickles Maya, Maya's face scrunched up in that cute way Riley wants to think her face does when she laughs, too. 

And it's a lot to take in, especially the way Maya sort of pushes at him, squirming away like she really doesn't care to distance herself at all. 

Riley clears her throat, smiles until it hurts. 

Maya elbows Lucas in the stomach. "Riley will save me," she says, more breath than sound. 

Riley laughs, awkward and forced and so obviously not okay. Her eyes feel too wide and her face feels stiff. "Maya, can I speak with you, please?" She nods behind her. 

"Yeah, sure." Maya's eyebrows pull in and she frowns. 

When Maya shuts the door to Riley's bedroom, she crosses her arms and leans back against it. Her body is relaxed, but her eyes are focused. "What? Are you okay?"

Riley clenches her jaw, breaths out through her noise. She doesn't know what to say. She wants to be calm and diplomatic and break the news to Maya gently. She wants to say something like: "I'm not sure if you've noticed, but Lucas looks at you a little bit like you hung the moon, and I'm pretty sure he would marry you if you asked him, maybe, just saying, in my opinion."

What she says is: "Lucas is in love with you."

"No," Maya says, dragging the word out too long. Her eyes widen and she she pushes off from the door. She has the same look she gets on her face sometimes when she's been keeping something from Riley to stop her from getting hurt, like when she didn't tell Riley she hated the sweater Riley knitted for her in home economics. Like when she didn't tell Riley that Josh kissed her.

"You knew."

Maya bites her lip and takes a step forward. "Look, he's not in love with me."

"Yes." Riley nods, more sure of it now. "He is. I just don't think he knows it." 

She believes that. She believes that Lucas is a good enough person that if he realized he was in love with Maya, he'd break up with her. She knows him. She knows he wouldn't do anything to intentionally break her heart. But this is worse somehow, like he doesn't know his back-and-forth with Maya is flirting, _flirting!_ \-- of course, Riley feels so dim. He doesn't understand the gentle way he defends Maya, sticks up for her in class and tries to protect her from people making comments that would hurt her, doesn't understand that it's more than thinking Maya smells nice and has shiny hair. 

"He'd know." Maya frowns. "And anyway, even if he does like me," she holds up a finger when Riley opens her mouth, "it's not about me."

Riley sighs before sitting down in the window. "Of course it's about you."

Maya's blonde and funny. She can think of jokes faster than Riley can process them. She wears vintage t-shirts and combat boots, and she can apply eyeliner so it doesn't get smeared onto her eyelids. She earned a B in geometry last semester, and the art teacher hung one of her paintings in the display case by the school's entrance so all the parents coming in for conferences or to cheer on their kid's sports team would see it. Maya is Riley's best friend, and it never occurred to her before that she should be jealous, but it makes all the sense in the world that anybody would fall in love with her.

"It's not, Riles, I promise." Maya sits next to her, takes her hand and squeezes. "It'll pass. He's just confused. Scared, probably, of how he feels about you. And I'm just a girl who's around." She shrugs. "It's nothing."

"Maya." Riley shakes her head. "He likes you because you're you, not just because you're around."

"He's gonna fall in love with you," Maya says, firm and serious. Her bottom lip quivers and Riley doesn't know if it's for her or herself. 

And suddenly Riley feels a bit selfish and a bit oblivious -- well, _more_ oblivious. Ever since Maya pointed out Lucas on the subway, this has been Riley's love story. Maya has been nothing but supportive and encouraging, and Riley didn't even notice that Maya liked Lucas, too. Not at first, she knows Maya didn't think of him that way at first, but now. She does now.

Riley wipes at her eyes when her vision blurs. "I don't think so."

"I'm so sorry. Nothing's going to happen between us, I promise."

"Maya," Riley starts, feeling a knot heavy and tight in her stomach. She feels like she has to vomit. "If you like him, and he likes you, what's the point in not being together?"

"It'll make you sad," she says, not missing a beat. "I can't be part of the reason you're sad."

"I'm going to be sad either way. You should be happy." Riley tries to smile, bringing Maya's hand into her lap and holding it between both of her own. "I love you, and I want you to be happy."

"I won't be though." Maya's face tightens. "I can't be happy if you're not."

"We're in a pickle then, huh?"

Maya presses her mouth together, nods. "So, we can't just go back to the way things were?"

"No." Riley shakes her head.

"Yeah. You deserve someone who loves every weird thing about you more than anything."

"I do." Riley smiles, but she still feels like she's about to start sobbing. "Lucas loves you like that."

"Don't you da--"

"Maya, listen to me." Riley grabs Maya's face, holds it between both her hands and stares at her. When she lets go Maya hasn't stopped looking at her, but she's raised one eyebrow comically. "I'll need time to move on, you know? Because I liked him a lot and I loved him a little. But I think I need to realize that not everything's about me, you know? My happiness isn't more important than yours. And I think you need to realize that you're amazing and you deserve someone who loves every weird thing about you. Even if that person is Lucas."

"You should hate me," Maya says. "I didn't do anything to stop it."

"You didn't do anything to encourage it either."

Maya swallows, looks down at her hands where she's picking at her nail polish. "I'm still sorry."

"Thank you. I think I'll need some time to myself, though."

It's odd. The words don't feel right coming off her tongue. Riley never pictured herself breaking up with Lucas -- it was supposed to be a fairy tale, after all. They were supposed to get the happily ever after. But whenever she's sad, Maya's always there. Maya comforts her and talks her down and lets her cry into her hair, even when Riley's blubbering and has snot dripping down her nose. But this time Maya's inadvertently part of the problem. Riley's not angry with her, but she is a little jealous -- she can't help a small, awful voice in the back of her head that asks _what if_ : what if she was funnier, what if she was blond, what if. She still loves Maya, though. Goodness. She's so glad she still loves her. 

"Right." Maya clears her throat and stands up. "I should go."

Riley almost laughs. She pulls Maya in and hugs her tight, wants her to know they're okay. That in a few days she'll call her, they'll go shopping and be best friends. Always. They've weathered too much to let this -- a boy -- break them. 

 

 

She breaks up with Lucas, tells him it just isn't working out. 

He seems sad, which makes Riley feel marginally better. She might be a good person, but she's not perfect.

She lets him figure out he likes Maya in his own time, and it takes him a bit longer than Riley expected. But it takes Riley a bit longer to get over him than she expected, too.

It takes Maya a little longer than expected to let herself be happy with Lucas, too worried about how Riley feels. But Riley loves her, wants her to be happy, and finds it in herself to be happy for her without reservation or a jealous tickle at the back of her skull.

Maya did see him first. That's how the rom-com goes.

And she's Riley's best friend in the whole entire world.

That is, maybe, Riley's favorite thing about her.


End file.
